The present invention relates to the field of label and receipt printers. More specifically, the present invention relates to a printer that is configurable for different paper sizes and corresponding methods.
Printers that print from paper rolls are widely used in various locations, including at the point of sale in retail establishments, in kiosk such as ATM and ticket machines, lottery machines, and anywhere the printing of labels is required, such as in the food preparation area of fast food restaurants or the like. Such printers include label printers, ticket printers, receipt printers, and the like (collectively referred to herein as “label and receipt printers”).
However, typical label and receipt printers are configured to accept a single size of paper roll. With such printers, there is no need to program or configure a cutter mechanism or a print mechanism for different paper widths or for different types of paper (e.g., plain paper, sticky label paper, etc.).
For certain applications or customer locations, it is desirable to have separate printers for both receipts and/or labels which use paper rolls of different widths or different paper types. To avoid the need to have two separate printers for accommodating paper rolls of different widths and types, the Assignee of the present invention, TransAct Technologies Inc., is developing a printer that can be configured to accept paper rolls of different widths and to print on paper rolls of different types.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous for such a printer to be automatically configured for accepting, printing on and cutting paper rolls of different widths and different types. It would also be advantageous to enable automatic configuration of a print energy, print speed, and print scale based on the size or type of paper present in the printer.
The methods and apparatus of the present invention provide the foregoing and other advantages.